The Cirian Legacy

I have been a fan of the concept of the Inquisitor game since it was released. I used to be a role playing gamer years ago but as I have gotten older the RPG culture has lost its appeal. What has not lost its appeal is the story. Most of the miniatures games I have done for the last several years have lacked the story aspect. When the Inquisitor rules were released several years ago I was intrigued. The idea of a narrative war game sounded like the perfect balance between RPG and minis.

There were a couple of problems. The first issue for me was the 54mm figures. I have decided sometime earlier that all my miniature games would be 28mm. This seemed to spell the end for Inquisitor. The other issue was there were no players in my group willing to play. They seemed to have the same problem as I did with the 54mm figures.

Then one day while searching for Necromunda sites I found this - http://hem.spray.se/kendoka/inq28/index.htm. It was like a revelation! You can play Inquisitor in 28mm...duh. It was so obvious I felt stupid for not thinking of it. This inspired me to get some people together and try it out. I managed to get one small game together with four players and me as the GM. It seemed to go well but did not hook the others. I don't know if it was the game or how I gm'ed it. Either way it went back on the shelf and to the back of the mind.

Fast forward 5 or 6 years and my friend Tim and I are looking to get a 40K campaign going. But this one would be different. It would not be limited to 40K 5th edition or even just 40K. We want to branch out and explore lots of different games set in the 40K universe. This could be anything from older version of 40K, 40K skirmish, Necromunda, Battlefleet Gothic and Inquisitor.

We have already done some patrol games and experimented with some skirmish. I started digging out all my old Inquisitor files and books. I ordered a new copy of the rules from eBay as mine were junk. I started checking in on the various forums reading about other's experiences with the rules and with the 28mm version.

Our first experience with the game will be me GM'ing The Cirian Legacy which is the first of only two Inquisitor: Conspiracies books GW produced for the game. The book is similar to an RPG module. They contain three separate campaigns that have a series of encounters. The campaigns can be played alone or as a set. The encounters are more of general guide lines rather than a very specific scenario. This allows the GM to tweek things to fit his group and campaign.

In preparation for this campaign Tim and I are working on creating the terrain or 'sets' for each scenario. We also need to assemble the 'cast.' Tim will be running his own Inquisitor band so he will be creating and painting those models. I will be running all the NPC cast and so I will be building and acquiring the models.

One of the pieces of advice I have acquired involves the use of 40K models in Inq28 games. This seems to be a bad idea for a couple of reasons. One is that it leads the players to seeing the game as a skirmish version of 40K which can lead to trying to put too many models on the table. The other issues is that the players need to see the models as characters and individuals. They need to take actions based on some attachment to the characters.

This sounds like good advice so I will be attempting to create unique and individual models for these games and I will avoid using stock 40K models unless the game calls for it. This will really give me a chance to do some cool figure modeling. I have noticed that the serious 54mm players are perfectly willing to use models from non-GW sources for their characters and conversion and I will be doing this for our Inq28 games. There are literally limitless models that can be created with all the different 28mm figure lines available.

This should be the beginning of an interesting gaming project so stay tuned for more updates.